A Fantastic & Easy Lemon Drizzle Cake for Father’s Day

I hate to cook. I do enjoy baking though, which is good because Marc is often heard saying, “will you make me a cake?” “Are you going to make cookies?”

Even though I enjoy baking, the same principle applies that I have established for cooking… it needs to be easy, thank you very much. Thankfully, this cake hit all the right marks.

I made Chef John’s Lemon Drizzle Cake (from FoodWishes.com) for Father’s Day and it was a huge hit. HUGE. (I’m currently eating a slice while writing this!) It’s adapted from Mary Berry’s own recipe, so, of course I have to try hers now to compare. But… is it easy? It is Mary Berry after all.

Please head to Chef’s John’s page for the recipe – if I list it here I’m just going to feel like a thief. But I will tell you my thoughts on its ease.

8 Things I Found Out While Making this Delight:

1. You likely already have these ingredients in your pantry. The only thing I had to run to the store for was a few lemons (and I ended up with extra – I bought 4, recipe calls for 2, but I knew I was going to double the drizzle).
2. We didn’t have self-rising flour (and neither does our small town store) so I followed the instructions for making it yourself and it turned out perfect. Scroll to the end of Chef John’s recipe and you will find this how-to in the “notes” section.
3. A few steps have you completing a task and then walking away for awhile; I love this because I don’t feel like I’m chained to my kitchen, but this may irk others. The first step is to combine sugar and lemon zest, and if you have the time you should really let that sit together for 30 minutes to an hour before moving on to step 2. It’s so worth it. Once the cake is in the oven, you can make the lemon drizzle, or you can wait until the cake is out to make it. Either way, that cake is in the oven for at least 50 minutes before you have any next steps!
4. I did double the drizzle for a moist cake. Chef’s kiss.
5. Once it is out and cooled down, it’s not recommending to dive in and enjoy until it has had some time to sit in the fridge, so you’re going to want to make this in advance. I repeat, this is not a rush job, people.
6. After its cooling down period in the fridge, it does need to come back to room temp before eating. It’s still edible straight out of the fridge, but it’s not as good.
7. I will be making this again and I won’t tweak a single ingredient.
8. You will need to adjust for altitude if you’re higher in elevation. This is something I’m still bad at doing after living in Montana for nearly 3 years. Our house sits at roughly 5,500 feet above sea level so we have to add extra cooking & baking time into everything. In this case, 5-7 extra minutes did it. Probably could have gone with 5.

I’m giving this recipe 5 stars for ease and for taste. The beautiful thing about keeping my notes on this post is it will hopefully remind me that I only need 5 extra minutes next time! This recipe will get copied onto a card and added to my collection. Thanks, Chef John!